Collapse and revival of electromagnetic cascades in focused intense laser pulses

Abstract

We consider interaction of a high-energy electron beam with two counterpropagating femtosecond laser pulses. Nonlinear Compton scattering and electron-positron pair production by the emitted photons result in development of an electromagnetic "shower-type" cascade, which however collapses rather quickly due to energy losses by secondary particles. Nevertheless, the laser field accelerates the low-energy electrons and positrons trapped in the focal region, thus giving rise to development of electromagnetic cascade of another type ("avalanche-type"). This effect of cascade collapse and revival can be observed at the electron beam energy of the order of several GeV and intensity of the colliding laser pulses of the level of $10^{24}$W/cm${}^2$. This means that it can be readily observed at the novel laser facilities which are either planned for the nearest future, or are already under construction. The proposed experimental setup provides the most realistic and promissory way to observe the "avalanche-type" cascades.

4 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Prolific pair production with high-power lasers
• QED cascades induced by circularly polarized laser fields
• Pair production in counter-propagating laser beams
• Pair Creation in QED-Strong Pulsed Laser Fields Interacting with Electron Beams
• Photon polarisation in electron-seeded pair-creation cascades

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Advances in QED with intense background fields
• Charged particle motion and radiation in strong electromagnetic fields
• Testing numerical implementations of strong field electrodynamics
• Spin and polarisation dependent LCFA rates for nonlinear Compton and Breit-Wheeler processes
• Scaling laws for positron production in laser--electron-beam collisions
• Electron - positron cascades in multiple-laser optical traps
• Polarized QED cascades
• Classical and quantum particle dynamics in univariate background fields
• Classical and quantum dynamics of a charged scalar particle in a background of two counterpropagating plane waves
• Onset of electron-seeded cascades in generic electromagnetic fields
• Hydrodynamical model of QED cascade expansion in an extremely strong laser pulse
• Particle trajectories, gamma-ray emission, and anomalous radiative trapping effects in magnetic dipole wave
• Testing strong-field QED with the avalanche precursor
• Collision parameters needed to measure polarisation-dependent nonlinear pair creation